


Tantalus

by Avelera



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Drabble, Episode 5, Episode Related, F/M, Missing Scene, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 04:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12833205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera
Summary: Maybe they're both dead already, and this is Hell. Micro is pretty sure he couldn't come up with a worse afterlife anyway than watching his wife and Frank Castle fall in love.Missing scene from episode 5 of "The Punisher" (2017).





	Tantalus

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little drabble I threw together after watching episode 5 of "The Punisher" because it wouldn't get out of my head. I hope you enjoy.

“Do you ever think we’re already dead, and this is Hell? And don’t say something stupid like ‘I’m already in Hell’,” Micro said the last in a mocking approximation of Frank’s voice. 

Micro was sitting before his many screens, the sound of the door slamming shut behind Frank echoed in the air. Grease from fixing Sarah's headlight lingered between his fingers.

“What makes you say that?” Frank said instead, keeping his tone flat and disinterested. The normalcy of the day hung about him, like a whiff of fading perfume. Already in the dank light of Micro’s cellar it was dissolving, but he clung to it anyway. The smell of the house, the easing of his shoulders and his body into something like the man he had been, the feeling in his hands of honest work instead of a gun. It would be gone soon.

Micro shifted, not turning around from the glow of the screens. His exposed back, his turned head looked vulnerable, like a dog baring its throat. “Because sometimes I look around this room, and I think the bullet must have got me that day. And that I should hand it to whoever designed this place, ‘cause I could never come up with a better Hell than this.”

It was then that Frank noticed the slur in Micro’s voice, saw the half-empty handle of cheap vodka on the desk beside him, within easy reach of Micro’s hand, the liquid still sloshing within the plastic.  And on the screen was Micro’s house. Frame after frame, every angle of it, frozen in time. And on each screen was Frank. Frank fixing the headlight, Frank smiling down at Micro’s daughter Lisa, Frank leaning against the kitchen counter, his posture open and at ease, sleeves rolled to his elbows as he chatted with Sarah. 

His own face looked like a stranger’s. He couldn’t recognize the expression on it, but he thought in the dim reaches of his memory he could feel what that expression had once felt like. A softening around the eyes as Sarah tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and glanced up at him from beneath her lashes. The way the other Frank shifted from one leg to the other, watching her even as she glanced down. The way their bodies canted unconsciously towards one another. 

“It’s not my fault you left them,” he said gruffly. Micro laughed. 

“No, it isn’t. And if I was really dead, I’d have to see this coming. Shit, I’d want Sarah to move on. And that’s why this is probably Hell. Cause you’ll never do it, Frank. You can’t. You’re not going to drag another family into your mess, and you can’t go back. And I can’t go back. So we’re just going to sit here, for eternity, wanting what we can’t have. Watching the other have it, just out of reach.” Micro took another drag of the vodka, winced. The stench of booze was acrid in the air, stripping molecule by molecule the lingering memory of Sarah’s house. “I would have wanted Sarah to move on, but I'd never have thought it’d be to someone like you. Never thought I’d have to watch.”

On the screen, the other Frank gave an easy smile, and looked almost human. He stood two steps from Sarah, and in two steps his fingers could trace the back of her hand, in two steps he could draw her close, and press their lips together. In two steps two people who had lost everything could try to pull something out of the ashes. It would be so easy, the two slotting together like puzzle pieces never meant for one another but that fit nonetheless. And she would understand the parts of him that could never be hers, and he would understand the parts of her and her children that would never be his. And that would be fine. Millions of broken people pulled something out of the ashes every day. That could be him. That could be them. 

If only Micro wasn’t right. 

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe this is Hell,” Frank said, and wrenched his eyes away from the screens, from the sight of Sarah, and the other Frank, and the home that would never be his. Around him, the basement lights were flat and gray, tinged with yellow like rot. The grease between his fingers felt like a stain. “It would explain a lot.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, if you have a moment to spare please consider leaving a comment.


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